


Make-Out Commitment

by LuxaLucifer



Category: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Naruto
Genre: Blank Period, Cruise Ships, Established Relationship, Fluff, Gift Exchange, Guy is canonically seasick okay, Inside jokes, M/M, Post-Canon, Retirement, TW: Vomiting, Vacation, Vomiting, albeit an especially progressive one, but I don't think it'll ruin the story, not in a sexy way I am NOT into that, there are some cameos by other characters but they're better as a surprise, there's one inside joke, this is a wholesome fit you could show to your grandma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 10:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28470021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuxaLucifer/pseuds/LuxaLucifer
Summary: Guy wants to go on a cruise. Kakashi wants to go home. Guy disappears at the beginning of their trip with a single note left behind, his whereabouts a mystery. Kakashi still wants to go home.Established KakaGai, Post-Naruto-Canon, Fluff.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Maito Gai | Might Guy
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28
Collections: KakaGai Week 2020 entries





	Make-Out Commitment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [androgynousclintbarton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/androgynousclintbarton/gifts).



> This is a gift exchange piece for the fabulous AndrogynousClintBarton that I got in the almost equally fabulous KakaGai server we're both in. Meeting you and sharing headcanons and character love (and hate!) has been an absolute joy. I had a lot of fun writing this story, and I hope you like it! :) 
> 
> FYI, I write with the dubbed terms for Naruto fics these days: I see the English-language and original Japanese as separate and valid texts, and as someone who's grown up with Naruto in English, it's these slightly distinct versions that I prefer to work with. Just something to keep in mind!

Kakashi rarely opens his mail. Being the former Sixth Hokage doesn’t stop him from getting endless junk mail from chain restaurants and horse dealerships, and every time he looks at the brazen font advertising a cheap new appliance his brain goes “You’ve killed people and you’re looking at a sale for buy one get one half off toaster. And worse, you’re thinking about buying one.” It is not conducive to his mental health. 

He gets home early one day though—always a sign something terrible will happen—and finds a thick, flashy envelope sitting on top of an insurance ad (what idiot would insure a man who’s already died once?). He is only human, and humans like shiny things. He opens the letter.

“Congratulations!” it reads. “You’ve won a cruise!” 

Kakashi stares at it. His brain is sending the first signals to his hands to toss it in the trash when Guy wheels from the kitchen to the hallway, half a corn dog sticking out of his mouth. 

“What’s that?” he asks, and Kakashi knows he’s doomed. 

***

As Kakashi unpacks their clothes, Guy throws up into a porthole. Kakashi puts several pairs of nondescript black long-sleeve shirts and matching trousers into the closet, accompanied by several more pairs of one-piece jumpsuits. Their tastes are so similar it’s a wonder how anyone can tell them apart. 

Kakashi considers telling Guy that he doesn’t understand why he wanted to go on a cruise when he knows he gets terminally seasick, but there’s no point. Kakashi has had that conversation with him. So have Tenten, and Sakura, and Kurenai. When Naruto approved the vacation time, he’d looked at Guy and said, “You sure about this, Bushier-Brows-sensei?” Even Lee had been hinted at the issue when he said, “Oh, wow, Guy-sensei, that’s an unusual choice!”

“Go on without me,” says Guy.

“Mmmm,” says Kakashi. “Tempting.”

Guy looks at him with bloodshot eyes. “Go on…without me.”

Kakashi sits on the bed, rubbing his back with one hand and reading Make-Out Tactics with the other. They continue in this way until a bell goes off in the hallway, signaling dinner. 

Guy’s eyes brim with tears, which is honestly impressive considering how much vomiting he’s been doing. “Kakashi…you’ll miss dinner. You have to go.”

“I brought food pills in case of emergencies.”

“No! You can’t waste even one meal on our amazing cruise! You have to enjoy the delights of the free buffet!” Guy grasps both of Kakashi’s hands, threading his fingers around Kakashi’s book. 

“How about I go grab you something from the buffet?” says Kakashi. “It might help if you can keep something down.”

Guy nods, sniffling. Kakashi reaches into his bag and pulls out a packet of portable tissues located next to labeled baggies of food pills and shuriken. What, is security going to tell a former Hokage no? 

Kakashi puts his book away, looking back at Guy to make sure he’s not about to fall out of the porthole. Once he’s ascertained that the window-to-bowl-cut ratio is satisfactory, he sticks his hands in his pockets and shuffles off to the buffet. 

He eats some boiled fish and rice for himself before piling a plate high with curry, sausage, rice, and whatever else he can find. There are a lot of people milling around in the big cruise dining room, some of them sitting at big round tables, some of them standing and talking with champagne glasses in hand. He’s been to dozens of parties like this, although approximately one hundred percent of them happened while he was on-duty. Assassinations are ninjas’ bread and butter. Or they used to be, back in the pre-Naruto days. 

As nice as it would be to stand around and wait for someone to talk to him (read: it wouldn’t), he heads back to their room, hoping Guy doesn’t throw the food back up and, more importantly, if he does, he does it out the porthole. He honestly can’t even feel the ship moving, but even looking at a boat gets Guy sick. Kakashi replays the conversation they’d had about going on a cruise in his head, but there’s no version of it where he doesn’t crush Guy’s heart. 

He opens the door. Guy is not there. Neither is his wheelchair. Kakashi sets the food down on the small desk and walks over to the now closed porthole, which has a note taped over it. 

“Something came up. Be back soon! xoxo, Guy.” It’s definitely Guy’s neat, blocky handwriting. The turtle drawn in the corner is their signal for ‘everything’s fine, I have not been kidnapped by ninja from a rival village.’ 

“Huh,” says Kakashi. “That’s new.”

He opens the porthole and chucks the plate of curry out the window. Good riddance. 

***  
With Guy gone, Kakashi spends the rest of the evening rereading Make-Out Tactics in their room. After he’s finished, he starts Make-Out Paradise, but he keeps getting distracted. Maybe he’ll start one of the new romance books he hid in the lining of their luggage. 

He keeps looking at the porthole. Where could Guy have gone while getting so seasick? Is this somehow a cover for a mission Guy didn’t have clearance to tell him about?

Wait, no. Former Hokage reporting. Sometimes Kakashi falls back into old ways of thinking, but there is no security clearance higher than him. If Naruto invents a super-secret-special clearance level so he can send Guy on solo missions and leave Kakashi alone on vacation, then Kakashi’s going to have a bone to pick, especially when Kakashi stayed Hokage for three extra years so Naruto could watch his damn kids take their first steps or whatever.

Kakashi picks up a new romance book, slips it into the spare dust jacket of Make-Out Paradise, and reads until he’s tired enough to go to bed. That’s how he spends many of his nights back at home, except usually Guy’s at his side. 

So far, fuck cruises. 

***

The next morning, Guy still isn’t back. Kakashi goes back to the buffet for breakfast. A young girl approaches him while he’s adding fish and rice to his plate. Her hair is braided down her back and she’s holding a plate of chocolate waffles. 

“Um,” she says. “Sorry to bother you, but are you the Sixth Hokage?”

“Yeah,” says Kakashi.

“I’m a huge fan of the Leaf Village,” she says. “You guys have, like, the best shinobi. It’s too bad you lost your Sharingan, though, having a reputation of being the Copy Ninja and all.” She looks genuinely disappointed.

“It was draining half my chakra at all times and morbidly reminded me of my life’s biggest tragedies,” says Kakashi. “Oh, there’s my friend, I have to go.”

He starts walking away even as she cries, “Oh no, I meant to ask for an autograph!”

Kakashi is walking towards a random group of people, but as he approaches he realizes there’s someone in that group that actually does look familiar. By the time he gets close enough to say, “Genma?” that person is gone. He blinks. The hair color was wrong, but who else would have a senbon in their mouth on a cruise?

“Can we help you?” says a man from the group Kakashi approached. 

“No, sorry,” says Kakashi, wandering off to another corner to eat his meal. 

Since Guy hasn’t miraculously appeared by the time Kakashi’s done with his meal, Kakashi takes matters into his own hands. He isn’t just going to mope around waiting for Guy to come back. While this cruise wasn’t his idea, he’s going to try and enjoy it. 

What do people do on cruises? His only real frame of reference is one of the final scenes in Make-Out Tactics, where the protagonist proposes on a cruise. Pretty smart on Jiraiya’s part to predict that even shinobi would clamor to hole themselves up on a boat for days at a time, all so they could wander around, go broke, and get sunburned.

Kakashi is already wandering around. It’s time to go broke. He heads to the casino.

***

“You’ve gotta be kidding me! This machine is rigged! I demand a refund!”

“They’re not going to give you a refund, Lady—” 

“Then at least get me a drink!”

Kakashi seriously considers turning around and walking back out of the casino, but there’s approximately no chance whatsoever that she hasn’t already registered his chakra signature. With that in mind, he aggressively sticks his hands in his pockets and walks up to the slot machines where Tsunade is sitting. He passes Shizune on his way but doesn’t talk to her—the glare she gives him is glowing with malice, and he doesn’t want to get involved with any of that.

Now that he’s farther into the room, the sights and sounds of the casino are almost overwhelming. Kakashi can almost understand why Tsunade is so enticed by it. He’s also deeply repulsed by the cacophony of stimuli. 

Tsunade looks at him with the same annoyance that she looks at everything else. “And now you’re here, which means something’s on fire! What’s going on in the village, Kakashi?”

“Nothing, as far I know,” says Kakashi. “I’m on vacation.”

Tsunade stops the cyclical motion of lever-pulling to stare at Kakashi. “You? On a vacation?”

“Turns out being Hokage sucks. Who knew?”

“Me, bitch,” says Tsunade. “I told you, like, every day. That’s what I got out of there and made you take the hat. And now you’re following in my footsteps, escaping the moment Naruto’s got the job. Ha!”

Kakashi leans against one of the slots. Around them, dozens of people sit in rows, collectively praying to fickle gods with the rhythmic clattering and chiming of the machines. Nearby, people cluster at tables, losing or gaining chips and with them, fortunes. Kakashi is competent at poker, blackjack, and roulette (the latter through cheating) for mission purposes, but he’s never particularly enjoyed any of them. 

“You seen Guy around?” he asks oh-so-casually.

Tsunade arches an eyebrow. “The Blue Beast has gone missing? Something to be concerned about?”

“I don’t think so,” says Kakashi. “Not according to him, at least.”

“Awww,” says Tsunade. “You miss him.” She elongates the word ‘miss’, batting her eyelashes at him. “Poor Kakashi.”

Kakashi walks away, passing Shizune on the way out. At the very edge of his hearing, he catches Shizune saying, “What makes you like this, Lady Tsunade?”

He can’t help it. It’s just a little bit, and it’s out of Tsunade’s earshot, but he laughs.

***  
Gambling hasn’t worked out, so he goes to the top level of the cruise ship. Out in the sun, Kakashi still sees no sign of Guy, but there’s a pool with yet more people swimming or tanning outside. He looks up at the sky and squints into the sun, shading his eyes with one hand. It’s an absurdly nice day, which must mean they’re in the Land of Fire’s borders somewhere. Maybe it’s professional bias, but only the Leaf seems so blessed with good weather.

He pulls out his expertly hidden romance novel from one pocket and a tube of sunscreen from the other. After applying it to his minimally visible skin (really just his arms and the top half of his face), he lays out on a beach chair near the pool and loses himself in the book. He’s understood his whole life through books, but romance? Romance isn’t as easy to memorize as a cookbook or instruction manual. Still, he’d thought he and Guy were going okay until Guy disappeared on this cruise. 

He squashes down his pervasive anxieties—Guy will see him for the boring has-been he is, Guy will be so nice about it but he won’t be happy anymore, Guy will leave and Kakashi will never wake up next to him again—and focuses on his book. 

He reads very little but refuses to move out of spite, spending several hours alternating between replaying his last interactions with Guy (mostly Guy vomiting, which Kakashi pathetically tries to read meaning into) and forcing himself another chapter into the book. Fuck this book. No one gets romance like Jiraiya anyway. Fuck romance. Fuck reading, actually. Words are for nerds. 

Frustrated and anxious, he gets off the beach chair when the sun begins to dip. He runs his hand through his hair, tensing at the tenderness of his skin when his thumb brushes his temple. 

Wait.

Is he sunburned?

How? He put on sunscreen. He pulls out the bottle, squinting to read the label because reading glasses are for old people, and sees that the expiration date is long since gone. Maybe Guy does have a point about throwing some things away.

He gets up and heads for one of the big windows looking into yet another dining room. Kakashi memorized the layout for the ship before they ever set foot on it, and he still marvels at how complicated the whole thing is. If someone wanted to sneak aboard assassinate a guest—or kidnap them while they were vomiting out of a porthole—it would be exceptionally easy.

Kakashi peers into the window and winces. He pulls down his mask a quarter of an inch just to compare skin shades, which makes him wince again. He’s already got practically translucent skin thanks to four decades of wearing a mask, but his mask tan is now next level, with the skin around his eyes generating its own heat waves. He touches it gingerly and is rewarded with smarting pain. 

He wishes Guy were here. Either he would have checked the expiration date on the sunscreen before Kakashi put it on, or he would have had Kakashi slather it all over his naked chest and they would have burned together. Kakashi was looking forward to watching Guy go swimming if his partner managed to get over his seasickness. He hates to see Guy go: he loves to watch him walk away. 

Straightening up, he walks away from the window and heads inside. He’s stopped at the door by the soft snicker of a teenager. He turns around and sees a young man laughing at him. Kakashi’s blood goes cold. He’s the spitting image of Guy’s deceased student, Neji Hyuga, except for the luxurious mustache on his upper lip. 

The young man waves dismissively at him. “I was never here,” he says. As Kakashi watches, he waves a hand over himself. Kakashi expects him to poof away in smoke or cast some type of genjutsu to make it look like he’s gone, but he’s still just standing there, leaning against the rail of the ship and smiling smugly. 

“Okay,” says Kakashi, shoving this interaction into a place inside himself Kakashi calls “the no fun zone” and Ibiki calls “deeply emotionally unhealthy, Kakashi, I really wish you would come to therapy more often.” 

Kakashi goes back inside, heading back to the cabin to shower and apply aloe vera, which Guy packed in a moment of prescience. He’s toweling his hair when he finds a note on their bed. It says, “Come to the evening show, xoxo Guy!” with the same drawing of a turtle on it. Kakashi sniffs and just barely makes out a whiff of Guy’s chakra signature. If Kakashi hadn’t sensed him during his shower, he must have gone to great effort to hide his presence while he was there.

He dresses in an identical outfit to the one he was wearing pre-shower and heads to the big theater where the shows happen. He remembers from the schedule he also memorized that there’s going to be a circus performance that evening, and while he does secretly enjoy circuses more than he lets on (he thoroughly liked playing an eyepatch-wearing performer back in the Land of Snow), the whole thing gives him a sour taste right now. 

Maybe Guy will be waiting for him. The thought energizes him more than he wants to admit. He plays it casual through another buffet dinner, trying not to imagine getting to the theater and finding Guy, resplendent in his green jumpsuit, sitting in the front row and waving to him. He’s not sure what Guy’s explanation for leaving for a day will be. He’s never been particularly imaginative, and he can’t answer weird bullshit questions like “why did you ditch me on a cruise you insisted on going on?” during a fantasy. 

He scans the audience the moment he enters the glitzy, glittering theater, but while there are a lot of ushers selling popcorn, there’s no green jumpsuit in sight. Disappointed in Guy and embarrassed in himself for how disappointed he is, Kakashi sits in an end seat—easier to get out if need be—and pulls out his book until the show starts. 

The lights go down, but none of the acrobats or anyone else comes out onto the stage. As the seconds draw on, people start muttering in the crowd. Kakashi catches snippets of conversation that all point to the inevitable conclusion that no one knows what’s going on. He reluctantly puts his book away and looks more closely at the stage. The curtains have opened, the lights are flashing red and purple on the stage floor, and the backdrop is in place, but still, no one comes forward. 

Suddenly, a horse gallops onto the stage and rears, neighing loud enough for the whole audience to hear. They all relax. Things are starting. Kakashi himself smiles: it reminds him of the final scene in Make-Out Tactics, which features the protagonist landing on a horse mid-acrobatic feats. 

The spotlight turns on and centers on someone standing on the high wire far above the stage. Kakashi looks up with everyone else and spots someone in a red outfit, maybe a dress, maybe a suit, standing far above everyone. Huh. The protagonist of Make-Out Tactics wears a red suit. 

The person up on the high wire walks a few wobbly steps, then leaps out towards the audience. Instead of falling, though, they stay up in the air. Some kind of jutsu, thinks Kakashi, and then the glint of metal betrays the wires holding the person up. They careen towards the audience, going a little bit faster than perhaps is wise. Everyone’s attention is distracted, though, by the sudden galloping of the horse down the center aisle. 

Kakashi keeps his eyes up. The person on the high wire’s movements are intimately familiar, even in a red jumpsuit instead of a green one. What is Guy doing up there? He has a thought, and that thought seems both ridiculous and extremely likely. He feels something warm in his chest blossom. Guy hasn’t abandoned him. Of course he hasn’t. Guy has never abandoned anyone in his life, and he’s always made his feelings about Kakashi very clear. Kakashi is the confusing one, the one who never knows how he feels, the one who has to spend six months outlining his emotions. Guy isn’t like that. Guy is his constant.

At this moment, his constant is swinging down from the rafters. Guy swoops down towards Kakashi like a bird of prey, looking resplendent in his bright red jumpsuit. His limbs askew, he lands on the horse with hardly an extra bounce, although the horse still doesn’t look too pleased. Guy has a rose between his teeth, and he takes hold of it, thorns and all. He gallops with the horse the last few feet between where he landed and Kakashi’s seat. Kakashi can feel the audience looking at them. His face is bright red, and it’s not the sunburn.

It’s 100% accurate to Make-Out Tactics, minus the jumpsuit. 

Kakashi knows what’s going to happen next.

Guy leans down and offers the Kakashi the rose. He takes it.

“Your beautiful flower has been a warmth to me through many long nights,” says Guy. Kakashi is mouthing the words with him underneath his mask. “It would make me the happiest man in the world if you would unite your flower with my stem.”

Guy slides off the horse and gets down on one knee. He wobbles a little managing his bad leg, but he manages fine, even pulling a box out from some secret compartment. “Kakashi,” he says, dooming both of them to endless media coverage with just one word. Right now, Kakashi couldn’t care less. “Will you marry me?”

“Yeah, okay,” says Kakashi, so quickly that it destroys any illusion of his cool demeanor. He grins at Guy. Guy, with big fat tears in his eyes, grins back. 

Then, with everyone watching, Guy turns his head and throws up on the horse. 

***  
  


“So you disappeared to set everything up?” says Kakashi.

“That’s right!”

“And you set up the cruise so you could recreate the scene from Tactics?”

“That’s also right!”

They’re lying in bed, pleasantly naked. Guy is happily applying aloe vera to Kakashi’s burned arms and face. People make fun of Guy’s haircut, but Kakashi stopped doing that long ago because Guy has never commented on Kakashi’s ridiculous mask tan. He would stop popping up in “Hottest Kage” lists if people saw him maskless. He’d at least fall behind Gaara, who’s been trying to take his spot for the last ten years. 

“Was Genma here to help you set up?” asks Kakashi. “I know that rat bastard is around somewhere.”

“He’s not a rat bastard, he’s one of your oldest friends,” says Guy patiently.

“He can be both.”

Kakashi digs his sad hot forehead into Guy’s shoulder. “And Tsunade?” She’d come around and offered her congratulations shortly after the actual circus show ended. It had somehow sounded like an insult.

Guy laughs. “She booked the cruise on her own. What an unforeseen surprise! Two Hokages on one vacation.”

“And the Hyuga with the mustache?” asks Kakashi cautiously. “What was that about?”

Guy looks at him in confusion, his hair spreading across the pillow. “The what now?”

“Nothing, never mind. Why aren’t you throwing up?”

“Asking so many questions is unlike you, Kakashi! Normally you are happy to stew in companionable silence.”

“Well, you got me curious,” says Kakashi, put out.

Guy reaches over to the end table and shows Kakashi a pill bottle. “They make seasickness pills now! So I feel great. The acrobatics were a bit much to handle, though. I hope that didn’t ruin things for you.”

“No,” says Kakashi. “It was wonderful.”

He’s silent for a little while, letting himself revel in Guy’s warmth. 

“We still have another week on this cruise,” says Kakashi.

“Yes,” says Guy. “Let’s spend it together! It’s our engagement cruise.”

“Cool,” says Kakashi, and means it. They’ll spend the cruise together, and then the rest of their lives together. No big deal. 

Except it’s a huge deal. The best deal. Kakashi sniffs Guy, and Guy doesn’t even say anything about it. Maybe that’s what being married will be like. 

Maybe Kakashi will start opening his mail more often. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed. If you did, I'd love any comments you have to give! :)


End file.
